Patel rose from obscure staffer to key operative

WASHINGTON — In the Trump administration’s four-year battle with the intelligence community, a recurring character was a brash lawyer named Kashyap P. “Kash” Patel. He appeared so frequently, in so many incarnations, that he was almost a “Zelig” figure in President Donald Trump’s confrontation against what he imagined as the “deep state.”

Patel repeatedly pressed intelligence agencies to release secrets that, in his view, showed that the president was being persecuted unfairly by critics.

Ironically, he is now facing Justice Department investigation for possible improper disclosure of classified information, according to two knowledgeable sources who requested anonymity because of the sensitivity of the probe.

Patel didn’t respond to text, email and voicemail messages, or a request to talk at his residence.

Patel, now 41, flew largely beneath the radar during the Trump administration. In the span of four years, he rose from an obscure Hill staffer to become one of the most powerful players in the national security apparatus. The saga of his battles with the intelligence bureaucracy shows how the last administration empowered its lieutenants to challenge what it saw as the deep state.

At the start of the Trump administration, Patel was senior counsel for Rep. Devin Nunes when the California Republican chaired the House Intelligence Committee in 2017 and 2018 and emerged as a leading critic of the investigation by special counsel Robert Mueller III into the Trump campaign’s alleged links to Russia. Patel then joined Trump’s National Security Council staff as senior director for counterterrorism. In 2020, he was a senior adviser to acting director of national intelligence Richard Grenell and his successor, John Ratcliffe, helping lead their efforts to remove senior career intelligence officers.

Patel’s most prominent role was his final job, as chief of staff for acting defense secretary Christopher Miller in the administration’s last two months. In that position, according to sources close to events, he challenged the Central Intelligence Agency and the National Security Agency, and very nearly became acting director of the CIA himself.

As with so many other still-mysterious aspects of the Trump presidency, there’s a riddle at the center of Patel’s many activities. Was there a systematic plan to gain control of the nation’s intelligence and military command centers as part of Trump’s effort to retain the presidency, despite his loss in the November 2020 election? Or was this a more capricious campaign without a clear strategy?

Patel’s story is an unlikely version of the American immigrants’ dream. He was born in 1980 in Long Island’s Garden City and attended public schools there. His family’s roots are in Gujarat, India, by way of East Africa. After a stint as a public defender in Miami, he moved to the Justice Department in 2014, where he worked on national security cases. His Pentagon biography describes him as a “lifelong ice hockey player, coach and fan.”

Patel moved from the Nunes’s staff to the NSC staff. At the White House, he was increasingly drawn into Trump’s battle against an intelligence community that the president had come to regard as an enemy.

The assault on the intelligence community escalated when Dan Coats retired as director of national intelligence in August 2019, after disagreeing with Trump about Russian election interference and other subjects. Trump chose as acting head Joseph Maguire, a former head of the National Counterterrorism Center. But Maguire was sacked in February 2020 after one of his deputies briefed Congress on Russian election interference — drawing Trump’s wrath.

Patel arrived at the DNI’s headquarters on Feb. 20 with Grenell, but employees there say it was Patel, as a top adviser, who ran the place — and began a housecleaning. Deirdre Walsh, the chief operating officer, was ousted, along with Russell Travers, the acting head of the National Counterterrorism Center.

“Patel was the action officer. He made it happen,” recalled one former top intelligence official.

Anger toward Patel within the national security bureaucracy mounted after an Oct. 31, 2020, hostage rescue mission in Nigeria. The incident, never previously reported in detail, was described by four high-level sources.

It was a rescue mission that was nearly aborted partly because of inadequate coordination by Patel. SEAL Team Six had been assigned to rescue 27-year-old Philip Walton, a missionary’s son who had been kidnapped by gunmen in Niger, near the border with Nigeria. Patel, as a senior counterterrorism adviser, had assured colleagues that the mission had a green light, according to several sources.

But as the SEALs were about to parachute jump to the rescue site, officials realized the Nigerian government hadn’t been informed, as required.

A frantic last-minute effort to obtain the necessary permission ensued. Finally, just 15 minutes before the operational window closed, the Nigerians were given word, the SEALs parachuted down, and the hostage was rescued.

Trump fired Defense Secretary Mark T. Esper on Nov. 9, five days after the election. Esper had sharply criticized Patel’s actions during the Nigeria hostage rescue and had protested attempts to declassify intelligence about the Russia investigation. Trump installed in his place Christopher C. Miller, head of the National Counterterrorism Center and a former Trump White House aide, as acting defense secretary. Patel was named his chief of staff.

A half-dozen officials say Miller was largely a figurehead and that Patel was the key civilian official at the Pentagon during the last two months of Trump’s presidency when he clashed with the CIA and the NSA over various issues.

The final chapter in this strange saga was Trump’s brief effort in December to remove Haspel at CIA and replace her with Patel. Haspel’s apparent crime was that for months she had been resisting efforts by Trump and Patel to declassify information he had gathered for Nunes back in 2017 and 2018.

An account of the final campaign to oust Haspel was compiled from several sources with close knowledge of events.

Trump’s plan unfolded in December when Haspel visited the White House to attend the president’s daily intelligence briefing. After the briefing, she was approached by Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, who told her that Trump intended to fire CIA Deputy Director Vaughn Bishop and install Patel in his place.

Haspel balked. She said that she would resign rather than accept Patel as her deputy. She said she would like to deliver her resignation directly to the president. Meadows disappeared and returned a few minutes later to say that the president had changed his mind: Bishop wouldn’t be fired; Patel wouldn’t be sent to the agency; Haspel would remain as director.

One take-away from this long, tangled story is oddly reassuring. For all the roadblocks in Trump’s way, he had the authority as commander in chief to do what he wanted in national security. Facing resistance from courageous officials who sought to protect the government, Trump in many cases simply backed down.

As bad as this story was, in other words, it could have been much worse.